


Come Over

by cupcakeb



Category: Elite (TV)
Genre: F/M, Recreational Drug Use, oh my god they were roommates! ... kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24466024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupcakeb/pseuds/cupcakeb
Summary: Valerio is sleeping in his car, and Carla sees no reason to let that continue when she has a perfectly empty apartment downtown that's sitting around unused. Maybe, just maybe, she could use a friend anyway.
Relationships: Carla Rosón Caleruega/Valerio Montesinos Hendrich
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	Come Over

**Author's Note:**

> The Carla/Valerio s3 AU none of you asked for. Oops. 
> 
> Title taken from Dagny's "Come Over". (Very creative, I know!)

Carla is _not_ having the best day. That much is clear.  
  
She is singlehandedly responsible for letting a murderer walk free. It’s too disturbing for her to even think about.  


She’s not a quitter. Watching a court acquit Polo of charges she knows for a fact were warranted? It makes her feel like one. 

There’s bile rising in her throat when she finally leaves the courtroom, when her mother tells her she did what she had to do and somehow doesn’t even bother to hide her disappointment. Her father pats her on the shoulder, gives her that glorious once-over of approval and she wishes she was still the same naive 12-year-old who used to crave it.  
  
She makes it through ten minutes of a completely silent dinner, just sort of pushing food around on her plate until she excuses herself and hurries up to her room. She puts on jeans and a hoodie and takes the back door, leaving through the kitchen where Mirella gives her a knowing smile that she doesn’t return.

Her quaint little two-bedroom apartment downtown is an excellent hideaway, even if it feels slightly tainted.  
  
(Her parents had given it to _her_ _and Polo_ for her 15th birthday.

Bitterly, she thinks, her father was trying to control her even then. Who gives their daughter a present as future-proof as an apartment and makes her share it with a teenage boyfriend, someone who might not even be in her life anymore a few weeks down the road?)

She doesn’t tell her parents where she’s going. Instead, she calls a cab, avoiding her father’s driver, and has it drop her off a block away, so she can pick up a bottle of wine from the small corner store she’d walked past a million times.  
  
She gets two because having nothing but a bottle of wine at the apartment sounds sad. She wants her wine to have company when she’s gone.  
  
The apartment is exactly how she left it, the last time she was here with Polo. There’s just a few pieces of furniture, a large dining table, the beautiful, simple bed frame they’d picked out last year, a nice rug she found in Croatia, and had them send here. The floor is still covered in plastic wrap to protect the new marble floors she’d had put in over the summer.  
  
Sighing, she grabs a bottle opener from the kitchen and opens a bottle of rosé. The glass she pours herself is comically large, but the first sip feels so glorious, she can’t find it in herself to care.  
  
Half a bottle in, she rips off some of the plastic and sits down on the floor. The marble is cold, even through her ratty old jeans, and she finds herself leaning back until she’s fully horizontal.  
  
Her father texts at 10 pm, asking where she is and she doesn’t hesitate for even a second before she texts him back, telling him she’s having a sleepover with Lu. When he calls her honey and tells her to have a good time, she wants to puke. 

Scrolling through Instagram, she sees stories of people she used to consider friends out at clubs, enjoying their Friday night, and sighs. She wouldn’t mind having friends again. 

She takes a selfie lying down on the floor with her glass of wine, somehow makes it chic, not sad, adds it to her story, and starts crying before she even manages to lock her phone. 

…  
  
The sun is in her face and her head is pounding, that’s the first thing she notices when she wakes up.  
  
Walking into the bathroom, she thanks her lucky stars (and past Carla, who clearly had her shit together) for leaving a toothbrush and some hair ties in the cabinet. 

Her stomach growls, because a bottle of wine isn’t dinner, and she wonders if there are any decent breakfast spots around here. It’s sad, really, that she never had a chance to explore the neighborhood, never spent much time in this apartment that doesn’t feel so much like hers than it does an unfinished construction site. 

Contrary to popular belief, Carla isn’t vain. She dresses for the occasion. Popping out to grab breakfast hungover? No need to overdo it. She splashes some water on her face, puts her hair up in a (very) messy bun, and slips into her jeans, which she finds discarded on the living room floor. It’s a look.  
  
She sees a familiar car parked just around the corner when she comes out of the little bakery with a bag of chocolate croissants in hand and wonders where she’s seen it before. Walking closer, she stops next to it, trying to jog her memory, when suddenly the tinted driver’s side window rolls down and Valerio’s head pops up to grin at her.  
  
“Bringing me breakfast?” 

She’s too stunned and hungover to come up with a snarky reply. Last she checked, Valerio is not the kind of person to be awake at 9 am unless he’s still out raving.  
  
Then she looks past him, sees the pillow in the backseat, the makeshift blanket, and frowns. Carla knows not to be direct and ask, was taught not to growing up, but she knows he’s seen the brief flash of confusion on her face and feels bad. 

There’s a bag of warm croissants in her hands, and she’d grabbed a few extra ones (because she has no plans to go home today, or ever) so she figures what the hell.  
  
“You’ll have to get out of the car if you want to join me, Valerio.” 

They walk back to her apartment and neither of them mentions how random it all feels, her in jeans and a hoodie, her hair a mess and him, interacting with her at all. 

When she gets out a key and opens the door to her building, he looks at her quizzically. 

“I didn’t know you live here,” he says, and she bites her tongue to refrain from telling him that might be because he doesn’t know her at all. 

She walks past him and towards the elevator.  
  
“I don’t,” is all she says, pressing the number for her floor and ignoring the way he looks at her. “Where did you think we were going, a park bench?” 

He smiles at her, all toothy innocent grin, and she finds herself relaxing just a bit. 

They eat their croissants in silence out on the balcony, sitting side by side on the floor, staring down at the city below them. If she finds herself liking his easy company, it’s only because she’s lonely. 

But he must be too, or else he wouldn’t be out here eating breakfast with someone who may as well be a total stranger to him.

Oddly enough, it works.

…  
  
He stays all day, leaving briefly to get his stash of drugs from the car which she politely declines. Her life is fucked up enough without adding drugs to the mix, thank you very much. He shrugs, doesn’t push her on it, and she finds it surprisingly nice of him.  
  
She’s cracked open the bottle of wine she still had left from last night at some point, finishing most of it by herself. They’re sprawled out on the cold marble, her with her legs drawn up to her chest leaning against the wall, while he’s on his back, lighting a joint.  
  
She rolls her eyes at him, not that he’s even able to see her face from his position on the floor. “Are you ever not stoned?” 

He seems to consider this, turns over onto his stomach with ease, and props his head up on his hand, smiling directly at her. 

“Do you ever get tired of policing other people’s behavior?” She raises her wine glass in a mocking toast because the answer is no — she doesn't. “What’s your issue with weed?”

“Well, for one, it smells absolutely disgusting,” she lists, scrunching up her nose in disgust. He takes a drag and blows smoke in her direction on purpose, laughing at her. “And I don’t think I would like how it makes you feel.”  
  
His face changes as he processes what she said. “You’d _love_ how it makes you feel, trust me.”  
  
Her stomach growls and she sighs, too lazy and tipsy and comfortable on the floor of this apartment she’s always sort of hated to get up and leave to get food. 

“Let’s order pizza,” Valerio says, and if she wasn’t having a severe existential crisis, if she wasn’t currently with someone who she knows for a fact will never tell a soul about this, she would say no. She’s pretty sure she’s never ordered pizza in her life. 

She holds her unlocked phone out to him, tells him to order whatever he wants, and watches him expertly navigate UberEats, an app she didn’t even know was on her phone at all. 

When the food arrives, she wordlessly hands him some cash for tip, and he comes back with two boxes of pizza, as well as a bottle of wine. They eat on the floor as the sun sets outside, and even though the pizza is greasy and the crust a little too thick for her liking, she loves every bite.  
  
She looks up from her food and catches him taking a picture of her.  
  
“Delete that,” she says, trying not to slur her words. “Now.” 

He chuckles, tells her to calm down. “It’s just for me. Something to remember this by.” 

“What, you’ve never eaten pizza with another person?” She smacks her lips and rolls her eyes, picking up another slice. Valerio is notorious for his random Instagram stories, and she does not want to run the risk of ending up in them. Lu would probably flip, people at school would talk and she’s certain it would somehow get back to her father.  
  
“I’ve definitely never had pizza with you.” 

Carla laughs despite herself. Grabbing her own phone, she’s quick to snap a picture of him, because maybe she wants to remember this moment, too.  
  
He poses for her, undoes the top buttons on his shirt, and holds a slice of pizza up to his mouth seductively.  
  
All things considered, running into him was probably the best distraction Carla could have hoped for.

..  
  
Her dad calls at 7, while Valerio is out on the balcony smoking a cigarette.  
  
“I’m still with Lu,” she hears herself say, and a part of her wishes she was. “You know we’ve barely seen each other since before Christmas.”  
  
Valerio walks back in and she gives him the universal signal for 'shut the fuck up’. He stares at her, confused.  
  
“Of course, I’ll be home for lunch tomorrow,” she says into the phone, giving him a pointed look. “Lu says hi. Yes, okay, bye dad.”  
  
Valerio walks towards the kitchen, talking to her over his shoulder. “I know the family resemblance is striking, but last time I checked my name wasn’t Lu.”  
  
He comes back out holding a glass of ice water in one hand, a large glass of red wine in the other. Gesturing, he gives her choice between the two, and bows his head when she points to the wine.  
  
“Whatever,” she mumbles, sitting back down against the wall again. “We can’t all have parents who don’t give a shit about what we do.” Okay, she might be deflecting, or the wine may be encouraging her to start looking for a fight.

Valerio sits down next to her, grabs her wine glass, and takes a sip. He seems contemplative, like he’s holding something back.  
  
“Right, I’m sure having a parent that cares enough about you to pay people off and try to kill the ones whose silence can’t be bought is the better alternative here.”  
  
A part of her can’t help but be impressed with his ability to bait her. She isn’t easily provoked.  
  
“Why aren’t you talking to Lu, anyway?”  
  
The wine tastes like water to her at this point, but she still takes a large gulp, mostly for dramatic effect.  
  
“Why are you sleeping in your car?”

He cracks up at that, raises his eyebrows like that’s a loaded question. She can’t help but smirk. She loves a good comeback.  
  
They fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed, wake up somewhere in the middle, and it doesn’t feel weird even once.  
  
Carla sneaks out in the morning, leaves her set of keys on the dining room table with her phone number scribbled on their pizza bill from last night, and doesn’t let herself think about how she’d rather have stayed to have breakfast with him.  
  
…  
  
School is the last place she wants to be, so she decides not to go on Monday. People will just point fingers and gossip and glare, none of which she’s particularly in the mood for.  
  
She’s almost at the point of enjoying her day off from meaningless school drama and boring classes, reading a book by the pool, when Samuel walks over unannounced.  
  
She’s getting increasingly tired of his inability to take a fucking hint and leave her alone.  
  
“I just want to get on with my life, but all the people I care about keep leaving me.”  
  
She doesn’t want to be included in that list, not when the only emotion she feels towards him is loathing. He played her, and she does not take betrayal of that sort lightly. Carla knows how to hold a grudge.  
  
“There is no _us_ , Samuel,” she tells him, and she hopes it hurts for him to hear.  
  
At school the next day, she ignores his stupid macaroni pick up line — does he think she has some kind of pasta kink? — and walks away from him. 

She texts Polo in class, asking him to give her his set of keys for the apartment back, and is surprised when he tells her they’re in his locker. 

The last thing Carla wants is for someone to see them talking, even though she feels a little bad for him. It can’t be easy knowing everyone at school hates you and wishes you were behind bars — even if he probably deserves prison time. 

She waits until most students have filtered out of the classroom after final period and nods at him to go ahead. 

After slowly packing up her books, she casually walks towards where he’s standing next to his locker, the hall mostly empty now. 

“Why do you need them back?” He asks, and she almost smiles at him when she notices the underlying insecurity that she always found kind of endearing creep into his voice. “Are you selling it?” 

In an alternate universe, where he didn’t kill her childhood best friend in a fit of rage to protect her, she would ask him to go for a drink now, would smile at him and twirl her hair around her finger and ask casual questions about how he’s been. 

In the real world, however, Carla can’t afford to get nostalgic. 

“None of your business,” she mutters, grabs the keyring out of his hands, and stalks off. 

Lu is waiting for her outside of the building, an irritated look on her face. 

“Are you seriously talking to him again? Is him killing a girl and getting away with it just another sick fantasy you came up with to spice up your boring sex life?”  
  
She considers ignoring her, but she knows how Lu works — ignoring her will only make her assume she’s right.  
  
“I didn’t realize you were talking to me again,” she says instead, crossing her arms in front of her chest. Lu scoffs, rolls her eyes, and she can tell there’s genuine worry behind the mean girl attitude.  
  
“Fine, then. You’re on your own.”  
  
This isn’t news to Carla, so all she does is shrug and walk away from Lu without a second thought. She doesn’t have friends, Lu hates her, water is wet — it's all the same to her.

..  
  
She doesn’t know why she goes over to the apartment unannounced, a bag of takeout in hand, but she does.  
  
Briefly, she considers knocking but remembers that this is her place, and she’s allowed to stop by.  
  
When she walks into the living room, Valerio is sitting on the floor, smoking from a small yellow bong. Even though it’s only been a few days, he looks comfortable in the middle of the empty room, like he’s lived here for years. It’s kind of nice.  
  
His face lights up with that boyish, genuine smile of his when he sees her, and she thinks that’s nice, too.  
  
“I brought dinner,” she says, setting the food down on the floor. She takes off her flats and sits down next to him, her shoulder brushing his. “I see you’ve got dessert ready.” Her eyes flick to the bong next to him and he grins.  
  
“I’m not sure you would like how it makes you feel,” he mocks, and she rolls her eyes in a playful way, nudges his shoulder with her own.  


Oh shit. Is she flirting? She’s not sure she means to.  
  
Feeling bold, she locks eyes with him and says, “I might surprise you,” and then she’s got the bong in her hand as he watches her like he’s impressed, or intrigued, or some other thing she likes.  
  
“No, not like that,” he motions, a lighter in his hand.  
  
Valerio reaches for her wrist, strokes his thumb against her skin. Fuck, that feels good.  
  
(She hasn’t had sex in over a month, and it’s making her a little jumpy, okay? Sue her for not being made of stone.)  
  
He shows her how to hold it, lights it for her, and tells her to take a hit. Carla has smoked cigarettes before, obviously, but her first instinct is still to cough. This feels more intense, and the taste is different, too.  
  
All in all, she doesn’t feel that different. It’s not the out of body experience she’s been sold in movies. She does feel more grounded, and weirdly relaxed. After passing the bong back and forth a few times, she takes off her stupid school blazer, annoyed. Valerio raises an eyebrow in question.  
  
“What?” She asks, throwing the blazer away from her. “God, I fucking hate school uniforms.” 

Valerio chuckles and gets up. “Want some sweats? I don’t want a bad choice of attire to ruin your first experience with drugs.”  


Under normal circumstances, Carla would say no. She doesn’t let other people see her in casual wear; hell, her family doesn’t even eat breakfast before getting fully dressed for the day. But things are different here somehow, in this unfurnished apartment, with Valerio — it’s kind of like purgatory, neither here nor there. So she follows him to the bedroom, where some of his stuff is now taking up most of the floor space, a suitcase in one corner, a duffel bag in the other.  
  
He throws some clothes on the bed for her, and goes to leave, lingering in the door as she unzips her skirt.  
  
She looks at him over her shoulder, unbothered. “This isn’t a free show, alright?”  
  
He leans against the doorframe, eyes following her movements as she steps out of her skirt and grabs the sweatpants. “I figured since we’re basically roommates now, nudity isn’t exactly off the table.”  
  
She picks up the shirt he found for her and hits him in the face with it, shooing him out of the room laughing.  
  
His clothes are big on her but surprisingly comfortable. She ties the pants extra tight at the top and tucks the shirt in. (For once, she’s glad there are no mirrors in the apartment because she’s sure she looks ridiculous.)  
  
When she comes back out of the living room, he’s poured them both a glass of whiskey, waiting for her in the same spot he was in previously on the floor. He takes a look at her, and motions for her to twirl, laughing. “I didn’t think you could pull that off, but I was obviously wrong.”  
  
She rolls her eyes, takes a mocking bow, and grabs her phone before sitting down next to him again.  
  
Later, after they’ve finished eating and drank half a bottle of whiskey, he nudges her head with his and looks down at where her legs are casually slung over his.  
  
“Can you stay?” He asks, and she glances at her phone, realizes it’s almost 10 pm. She’s buzzed, and she’s got her school clothes to change into here anyway, so she figures it can’t hurt. She types out a quick text to her dad, tells him she’s sleeping over at Lu’s, and turns her phone off.  
  
Then, they’re both just sort of hanging out in bed in the dark, not talking, but she can tell from the pattern of his breathing that he’s just as awake as she is.  
  
“Valerio,” she says, and it comes out as a whisper. “Why did your dad kick you out?” 

He takes a deep breath, goes to answer but she stops him. “Don’t lie to me. I know it’s not because of drugs — he would’ve done that sooner.”  
  
“Well…” He’s playing with a lock of her hair, and she’s on her stomach as he leans back against the pillows. “Let’s just say he didn’t like seeing me with Lu.”  
  
The laugh she lets out is dry and humorless. It echoes in the dark, empty room.  
  
“That’s fucked up,” is all she says, processing the implications of his admission, subconsciously moving closer to him when he moves his hand from her hair to her back.  
  
“Yeah, it really is.”  


…  
  
“You should decorate the place a little,” she says one day when they’re once again hanging out on the floor. Her back is getting a little tired of it. “Just pick out some stuff and send it to me, I’ll order it.”  
  
He smiles at her, a genuine, grateful smile and she turns to look at her phone, uncomfortable with the situation. She still doesn’t know why she decided to let him stay here, and she doesn’t know why she’s continuing to spend all this time here, with him, either.  
  
The offhanded comment he makes about turning the place into a sex dungeon lightens the mood, until he realizes she’s not opposed, and they fall into tension-filled silence.  
  
She clinks her wine glass against his, mutters “Welcome home,” and doesn’t quite meet his eyes when he toasts her.  
  
..  
  
When he texts her the craigslist ad in class, she seriously wonders why the hell she’s even talking to him. This neon green sofa, which the poster describes as “well-loved and ready to find a new, loving home”, is not what she had in mind when she told Valerio she wouldn’t mind if he picked out some actual furniture for the apartment. It’s a simple two-seater, though she immediately notices the sizable rip on the right seat cover.  
  
**14:22:** _NO.  
  
_ **14:22:** but its PERFECT! _  
  
_**_14:23:_** _NO ! ! !_

She looks up from her phone and finds him rolling his eyes at no one in particular. Smiling to herself, she reads his reply.  
  
**14:23:** b _ut its FREE! did you know theres people out there just giving away furniture like that?!_  
  
“Valerio, no phones in class!” Their teacher scolds, and he quickly puts it away, apologizing. She doesn’t bother texting him back.  
  
After class, when she walks past him in the hall, they make eye contact for the briefest moment of time and when he pouts and mouths “please”, she takes a deep breath, smiles and nods just slightly. She pays his little victory dance no mind and keeps walking, waving at Yeray with a forced smile when he spots her across the hall.  
  
So that’s how she finds herself in the back of a disgusting, filthy Volvo station wagon, her new couch strapped to the roof. The owner offered to drive them, and Valerio very graciously accepted before Carla could interject and call an Uber XL.  
  
“It’s absolutely perfect,” he shouts, when they finally get the ugly thing through the door and he’s pushed it against the wall, into the little nook between the kitchen and the balcony that he loves so much. 

Running back over to her, he grabs her hand and drags her towards it. “Let’s christen it!”  
  
Her mind is definitely in the gutter because when he stops in front of the two-seater, takes off his shoes and bends down to help her slip out of her own, she expects his hands to slowly drift up her legs and under her skirt.  
  
Instead, he jumps onto the couch, drags her up with him and starts jumping up and down. She’s too dumbfounded to do anything other than jump with him, her hair coming loose from the ponytail she was wearing it in in the process. Her foot gets stuck in the ripped seat cushion at least twice, and the second time around she falls towards Valerio, who immediately collapses into a sitting position, somehow catching her in his lap.  
  
They’re folded up in a giggling heap, and despite being completely sober, Carla can’t stop laughing for at least five minutes straight. She can’t remember the last time she just let herself do that.  
  
He’s such a fucking kid at heart, and sometimes she can’t help but let him rub off on her. 

(Sometimes, his carefree attitude turns her on so much, she’d like to rub _herself_ on him, but that’s a different problem altogether.) 

…  
  
“Hey, you’re friends with Rebeka and Samuel, right?”  
  
It’s a Sunday morning and she’s dropped by with croissants, champagne and orange juice, ready for a makeshift brunch. They’re sitting on the balcony, wrapped up in jackets and a blanket to shelter from the cold February air.  
  
He laughs at her — a reaction she doesn’t appreciate seeing as it was hard enough to muster up the courage to ask — and she pouts. “Are you trying to use me to gather intel on your ex?”  
  
“He’s not my ex,” she insists, dipping her croissant in the jar of Nutella Valerio had conveniently procured from one of the kitchen cupboards. “I was just curious about where they think you live now.”  
  
Stuffing the last piece of his croissant into his mouth, he grins at her. “I told them I’m staying with a friend,” he says, and takes a sip of his mimosa. “They didn’t exactly press me for details.”  
  
She hums in acknowledgment. “At least you didn’t have to lie, then.”  
  
He looks at her like having her agree to call them friends is the most sexual thing he’s ever heard, and she’s this close to just stripping naked and mounting him, but somehow manages to hold back.  
  
This thing in her head, where she can’t stop thinking about feeling his big hands grabbing her roughly? It’s becoming a problem.

..

They’re lounging on the stupid, hideous sofa after school, each of them drinking from their own bottle of wine. It had been his idea to buy the cheapest, shittiest wine they could find and while Carla finds the idea abhorrent, she’d somehow gone along with it because he made it sound fun. She’d never admit this, but it’s surprisingly good considering it cost all of three euros for the bottle.  
  
Valerio had insisted they drink straight from the bottle, too, and she’d tried arguing with him but gave in when he promised her she could sit on the couch cushion that isn’t ripped. A worthy trade-off. (Briefly, she contemplates how this is what her life has come to.)

  
The wine mostly gone, their conversation has moved into existential crisis territory.  


“Sometimes I just want to feel like I make my own choices.”  
  
He chuckles, looks at her like he doesn’t buy it. Yeah, she wouldn’t believe she’s the kind of girl that lets anyone control her, either. 

He chugs the rest of his drink, a deadpan look on his face. “So why don’t you?”  
  
There’s such simplicity in the way he says it, in the way he clearly takes making his own decisions and feeling confident about them for granted. It makes her take his question seriously, though the wine may have something to do with that, too. 

His arm is slung across the back of the couch leisurely, playing with the ends of her hair.  
  
“I guess,” she sighs, takes a sip of her wine, and starts again. “I guess maybe I don’t know what I want.” 

That’s all Carla gets to say, because then Valerio is kissing her, a little sloppy with intoxication, a little rough with desperation, and she is kissing him back in the same way, not picturesque or romantic but awful and raw.

"What about right now?" he asks, and her eyes fall to his lips, so he pushes his hands up under her shirt and grabs her hips, tight. "What do you want to do right now?"

She rubs herself against him, says something really, really filthy into his ear and then pulls her shirt off and sinks to her knees between his legs.  
  
Carla knows what she wants _right now_ , and after weeks of depriving herself of it, she gives in.

…

Here’s what she finds so intriguing about him: he can go from fucking her in the most intense of ways to casually avoiding her at school like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Sometimes he’s so good at it, she wonders if she’s made it all up, if all the time she’s spent at the apartment with him was some kind of daydream she got stuck on. (But then she remembers the bruises on the inside of her thigh, the bite marks all over her chest that had her wearing high cut tops for a week, and concludes he’s just a really good actor.) 

As the saying goes, all late-night conversations turn sexual, and now that they’ve broken down that barrier of restraint, she finds it rings true. 

Carla is the polar opposite of a prude, will try anything once, and Valerio is her equal. Finding someone who’s as depraved as her is oddly thrilling. 

Sometimes, she lets him drive her to the apartment, always making sure to meet him a little further away from the main school entrance to avoid curious looks. She makes him close the convertible top to avoid being seen with him, and while he jokes about her being ridiculous, he always complies with the unwritten rules that outline their arrangement. 

This vacuum their friendship exists in? It’s the most chill, exhilarating secret Carla has ever gotten to keep. She loves the way it feels natural, like they don’t need to try to stay away from one another at school — there is no _them_ at school, and neither of them takes it personally when the other doesn’t bother to acknowledge their existence in class. 

Bitterly, she thinks about how Valerio has had years of practice in hiding illicit affairs from people, but immediately discards the thought. This isn’t what they do — she’s not going to be jealous of his messed up relationship with his sister, of all people.

...

The whole Yeray thing is becoming an issue. When he buys a car to match her outfit, she doesn’t bother to hide her disdain. How very nouveau riche of him.   
  
Then, her father tells her she should know what she has to do, and she feels her throat close up, struggles to breathe for a second. She’s known Yeray for little more than a month, has barely shown any interest in being around him, and yet she knows her future is irrevocably tied to him if she wants to save her family fortune. 

Him being mostly disinterested in having any sort of physical relationship with her comes in handy for Carla; it’s bad enough to have to emotionally prostitute herself to save her family — she doesn’t know how she’d feel if she had to literally use her body to get the job done. They have sex sometimes, and it’s — well, it’s okay. She’s had better.  
  
He invites her over and she stays for dinner, which he has a chef prepare and serve for them in the open plan kitchen. She’s had a personal chef all her life, and yet the way he speaks to the man and acts around him feels uncomfortable for her. 

After, she excuses herself, kisses him on the cheek and has his driver take her to the apartment. Her dad knows she’s with Yeray, so he will be pleased if she doesn’t make it home tonight. God, he disgusts her.  
  
She texts Valerio on her way over, just a wine emoji and a question mark, and he greets her at the elevator with a glass of Merlot already poured for her.  
  
She loves how good he is at taking care of people.  
  
He guides her inside, makes chit chat about the new coffee table he ‘built’ (it’s just an empty wooden wine crate from one of the wineries which he’d sort of cut open) and she’s grateful to him for never once asking what has her running to him in such a frenzy.  
  
He kisses her first this time, tells her he can tell she’s had a bad day and makes her feel so good, she dreams about it for the rest of the week.  


…  
  
She finds out her mother knows about her father’s grand plan of whoring out his own daughter and she loses it, just a little bit. Loses what little composure she had left to begin with. She puts on the tightest, shiniest dress she owns and pulls her hair back because she intends on getting very fucked up tonight, thank you very much.  
  
Through the school rumor mill, she knows Valerio is dabbling in drug pushing, so she seeks him out the second she gets to the blackout party. He gives her a careful, concerned look when she approaches him in the hallway outside of the bathroom, and she appreciates his discretion.  
  
They’re in public, so she plays coy, but she knows what she wants, and knows he’s just the drug dealer she was looking for. She licks the molly off of his finger and sees the little smile on his face when she does like he’s proud of her or something.  
  
She doesn’t go completely insane — but she dances like she hasn’t for a long time. Even Yeray’s presence is briefly bearable, so maybe she should do drugs more often. He leaves before the blackout even starts, and she’s high enough to try and persuade him to stay, but to no avail.  
  
Valerio is busy dancing with Cayetana and Polo, or else she’d absolutely stop pretending like they’re strangers and go over to him. Instead, she hurries to the ladies' room where she splashes water on her face and ensures a steady flow of endorphins in her blood by doing a tiny bit more molly.  
  
Of course, Lu chooses that exact moment to walk in, moving towards her with shock and disdain written all over her face. Carla stares at her expectantly, waiting for the lecture, and laughs exasperatedly.  
  
“You’re not serious, are you?” _Here we go,_ Carla thinks and rolls her eyes. “I would expect this from Valerio, but you? Where did you even get the drugs?”  
  
She stares at Lu, trying to come up with a delicate way to get out of this. “Look, Lu, maybe you should worry about yourself instead of me… or Valerio. Believe me, he’s doing fine.”  
  
Lu glares at her, trying to comprehend what’s going on, but Carla doesn’t care enough to wait for her to figure it out. She pats her on the shoulder, smiles at her, and walks back out into the club. Spotting Valerio by himself at the bar, she strides over and pokes his side to get his attention.  
  
He smiles at her, a wide grin on his face and takes her in. “I take it you’re having fun?”  
  
She is, can already barely focus on why she came over here, and doesn’t mention her encounter with Lu at all. Instead, she steals a sip of his drink (Coke Zero, she thinks, and immediately wonders what he’s on tonight if he’s sticking to soft drinks) and drums her fingers on his thigh.  
  
“Carla,” he warns, grasps her hand in his to get her to stop and she knows that she needs to make up her mind here. There’s no way she can dance with him in front of all of these people they know, not after her weird conversation with Lu, and not with him technically kind of (apparently?) dating both Cayetana and Polo.  
  
She grips his hand firmly and gives him a shameless look, one that she normally saves for more intimate occasions. “Take me home, Valerio,” she settles on, and feels so turned, she might just jump him right here if he doesn’t act.  
  
He tells her to meet him outside of the club in five minutes, and she leaves without saying another word.  
  
Thankfully, the apartment is a short walk away from the Barceló, so they don’t need to take a cab. As soon as they’re a block away, she pushes him against the nearest wall, kisses him so hard she can taste blood from where she bit down on his lip.  
  
He may be a tad more sober than she is, but she sees his pupils are blown, his eyes dark with desire and whatever drugs he’s on.  
  
“Carla,” he tries, and goes for a warning tone again though she can tell he’s into this as much as she is. Her hands are on his belt. “Someone could see.”  
  
“And you’re saying you’re not into that?”  
  
He’s grabbed her by the hips and turned her around before she can even register it happening. 

All in all, she’s left thinking she should do drugs more often.  


…  
  
They have a chemistry exam a few days later, and she hasn’t studied for even a second. Carla has been busy dabbling in her very own personal chemistry experiment, having switched out the molly for coke as of late, and none of the questions on the iPad in front of her make any sense.  
  
When Lu sees her ready to give up just minutes into the exam, she calls her out.  
  
“What the fuck?” The girl whispers, trying for discrete, but the rest of the classroom is silent so she’s sure everyone else is listening.  
  
“I don’t know any of this shit,” she mutters back and doesn’t react when Lu tells her to try harder.  
  
Bitterly, she wonders why Lu is helping her cheat on this exam at all when she’s made it clear she wants nothing to do with her otherwise.  
  
“Tell me what’s going on,” Lu begs her after class, and she’s never been happier to see Yeray than she is now when he interrupts their conversation and brags about a house he rented for the two of them instead.  
  
Lu leaves, tells her to call her, and she knows she won’t.  
  
…  
  
She overdoes it just a bit with the molly, takes a little too much because she’s having a fucking horrible week, underestimates what the heat will do to her body in her current state and ends up in the pool face down. It’s no big deal, really.  
  
One minute she’s dancing, enjoying how everyone at this party is clearly on something, and the next she wakes up to Valerio and Polo slapping her cheeks repeatedly, the party around them long dispersed. She blacks out again, wakes up at the apartment somehow, with Valerio sitting next to her on the bed.  
  
He lets her sleep, doesn’t try to get her to talk, just leaves a bottle of water for her. She has no idea what time it is, or even what day really, and passes out again.  
  
When she finally wakes up feeling more alive than she did before, he’s next to her in bed taking a nap, wearing just a pair of briefs. She can see sunlight streaming in through the blinds, so it must be the next morning already.  
  
Sighing, she sits up far enough to take a large sip of water and nearly spits it out when it burns her throat going down. Right, she muses, the whole choking on saltwater in the pool and struggling to breathe thing must’ve left its mark. She takes another sip of water, prepared for the pain this time, and swallows without issue.  
  
The drugs have worn off, and she feels the comedown coming on, knows the telltale signs of her neuron receptors running out of endorphins to distribute by now. She nudges Valerio, who’s asleep on top of the covers, seemingly ready to jump up in case she needs anything, and gives him a weak smile.  
  
He looks concerned, but smiles back, slipping under the covers and motioning for her to join him.  
  
As she drifts off again, she can’t help but think about how he’s the best friend she’s ever had.  
  
…  
  
He gets kicked out of school for dealing drugs, because Polo is a jealous, controlling idiot, and she hates that she indirectly caused this with her little overdose episode.  
  
She texts him the second she hears, asks if he needs company, and she’s back at the apartment with two bottles of wine (the cheap stuff he keeps insisting he actually likes) thirty minutes later. Helping a friend seems like a pretty good reason to skip class in her final week of school.  
  
“Are you mad?” She asks, her feet up in his lap as they sit on the couch she’s almost come to like. Instead of answering, he raises his wine glass in her general direction and takes a drink.  
  
She laughs, sits up a bit, and puts her own glass down on the makeshift coffee table. “That’s what you get for getting involved with Polo — trust me, threesomes involving him never end well.”  
  
The way he laughs despite himself makes her think he’ll be over this in no time, but she figures she can help things along.  
  
She straddles him, takes the wine from his hands and drinks the last bit before putting the glass down. “Want to live out any pent up school girl fantasies before I never put this stupid uniform on again?”  
  
His hands are on her in an instant, his kiss more bruising than ever, and if he’s a little rougher with her than he normally is, she doesn’t mind. When he tries to bite her neck, she pulls his hair roughly to get him to stop.  
  
“My graduation dress is strapless, you’ll have to think of other places to mark me in.”  
  
Valerio loves a challenge as much as her and gets creative.  
  
They’re a weird match — not quite friends, definitely not in love, but she loves his companionship and the physical benefits that come with it all the more for it.

…  
  
After graduation, when she finds Lu at the club, shaking in a way she’s never seen before, her protective instincts kick into gear. She follows the trail of blood and picks up the bloody bottleneck without hesitation.  
  
She doesn’t know what happened exactly, but she knows it’s Valerio who can fix this.  
  
He’s with Cayetana, who is understandably distraught, but leaves the blonde in Rebeka’s care instantly when Carla taps him on the shoulder and motions for him to follow her.  
  
Thankfully everyone else is too engrossed in the fact that Polo just _died_ to bother paying attention to her pulling Valerio away into a quiet corner.  
  
She tells him what she knows, which isn’t much, lets him know she has the murder weapon, and leaves the rest up to him.  
  
Of course, she’s in shock too — Polo was her first boyfriend, someone she made plans to retire to the countryside with someday — but seeing Valerio take charge of the situation is reassuring to her. Bizarrely, she realizes, she trusts him to handle shit like this.  
  
He somehow talks a completely traumatized Lu into lying, gets everyone else on board, and when they leave the club in the early morning hours after speaking to the police, she knows not to approach him.  
  
Lu is clinging to his arm, her makeup a mess. Briefly, Carla’s eyes meet Valerio’s, and she just nods her head in the general direction of the apartment — there’s no way he should take Lu home like this, not when their father is likely already awake. He gives her a grateful smile and slowly directs Lu that way.  
  
When she gets home, she throws up for ten minutes straight. It feels oddly freeing.  
  
…  
  
She needs to get away from this city and the people in it, that much is clear to Carla after the year she’s had.  
  
When Yeray offers her control of the wineries, she knows just who to call to take charge in her absence.  
  
Valerio keeps the apartment, gets a fancy job title, and Carla feels at ease knowing she’s got someone she can trust leading operations.  
  
Her first stop after her flight home for winter break after her first semester at school is his apartment, and he makes a big show of giving her a tour, showing off all the random furniture he’s acquired over the past months.  
  
She can’t help but laugh when she sees the awful green sofa still sitting in its spot in the living room, looking as worn as ever. He sits down and waves her over to join him.  
  
“For old time’s sake, huh?”  
  
Her hands are in his hair before she can change her mind, their mouths almost touching.  
  
“Yeah,” she murmurs and unbuttons his shirt. “For old time’s sake.”  
  
//  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> find me [on tumblr](http://cupcakeb.tumblr.com/) if you want to yell at me about how you had no idea these two had any chemistry and now you CAN'T UNSEE IT.


End file.
